This invention pertains generally to patient monitoring, and more specifically to monitoring patient status and communicating with a patient from a point remote from the patient""s location.
An ongoing concern in the medical profession is the containment of labor costs, especially the cost of nursing and other patient monitoring personnel. One way to minimize costs is to find ways to allow fewer nurses to monitor larger numbers of patients without jeopardizing patient safety. In addition, hospitals are discharging patients earlier, allowing them to recuperate at home rather than in the hospital. In a typical hospital setting, nurses must periodically check the patients"" vital signs, to administer doses of medicine, and to attend to requests or problems reported by patients. Where patients are recuperating at home or in far-flung branches of a large hospital, however, it is especially difficult for nursing personnel to monitor those remote patients in a cost-effective manner.
Another concern in the medical profession is the accurate administration of prescription medication to patients. Typically, prescription medicine is administered at periodic dosing intervals during a day. These dosing intervals are determined by a dosing schedule established by a treating physician. Medical support personnel administer doses of medication by retrieving the prescribed doses from bulk medicine supplies at the hospital pharmacy. This approach is inefficient and error-prone, because the support personnel often split time between administering medication and performing other duties. Further, to the extent that records of medication doses are kept, those records of medication doses are kept manually by the support personnel themselves. If the personnel are hurried, they may not keep accurate records of medication doses. In addition, the medication doses may not be correct because a harried support person failed to fill the prescription properly.
Yet another concern is the precise placement of the various sensors used to sense a patient""s vital signs through physical contact with the patient""s body. For example, an EKG sensor operates by sensing electrical activity within the body, and must be placed strategically on the body best to detect this electrical activity. Similarly, other types of sensors must be placed carefully and precisely for optimum sensing effectiveness. In the context of remote patient monitoring, it is desirable to avoid requiring medical support personnel to travel to the patient""s location to place and check the various sensors located on a patient""s body. Imposing the expense of such travel on medical support personnel could outweigh any benefits realized by having the patient recuperate at a site remote from the hospital.
The present invention provides an integrated patient monitoring system that includes a garment, a monitoring device, and a medication-dispensing unit. The garment is adapted for wearing by a patient, and is adapted to place at least one sensor in communication with the patient""s body. The garment includes a connector communicating with the sensor. The monitoring device communicates with the sensor through the connector, and records signals from the sensor. The monitoring device also exchanges signals representing patient status with a central station. Preferably, the patient monitoring system restricts access to the monitoring device to authorized personnel. The medication-dispensing unit communicates with the monitoring device to receive commands from the monitoring device, and to transfer signals representing the status of medication doses to the monitoring device.
The garment of the invention includes at least one sensor, a torso portion adapted to fit the torso of a patient and defining at least one aperture to house the sensor, a sleeve portion adapted to fit the arm of the patient, and a connector communicating with the sensor. Either the torso portion or the arm portion defines a one channel linking the connector to the sensor. This channel houses a signal transmission conduit that couples the sensor to the connector.
The automated medication dispenser includes a carousel, a housing, a dosing drawer, a recovery drawer, and a microcontroller. The carousel defines a plurality of compartments, with each of the compartments adapted to store a dose of medication. The housing includes a surface adapted to receive the carousel, with the housing defining a receptacle and an access aperture communicating between the receptacle and the surface adapted to receive the carousel. A first one of the compartments is positioned to communicate with the receptacle through the access aperture. The medication dispenser provides means for rotating the carousel to position a second one of the compartments to communicate with the receptacle through the access aperture.